Dangerous Hurricane Iota makes landfall on Nicaragua coast
MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — Powerful Hurricane Iota made landfall on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast late Monday, threatening catastrophic damage to the same part of Central America already battered by equally strong Hurricane Eta less than two weeks ago.
Iota had intensified into an
extremely dangerous Category 5 storm early in the day, but the U.S.
National Hurricane Center said it weakened slightly to Category 4, with
maximum sustained winds of 155 mph (250 kph). Its center made landfall
about 30 miles (45 kilometers) south of the Nicaraguan city of Puerto
Cabezas, also known as Bilwi.
Iota already had been hitting the Caribbean coasts of Nicaragua and Honduras with torrential rains and strong winds.
Iota
came ashore just 15 miles (25 kilometers) south of where Hurricane Eta
made landfall Nov. 3, also as a Category 4 storm. Eta’s torrential rains
saturated the soil in the region, leaving it prone to new landslides
and floods, and that the storm surge could reach 15 to 20 feet (4.5 to 6
meters) above normal tides.
In Bilwi, business owner Adán Artola
Schultz braced himself in the doorway of his house as strong gusts of
wind and rain drover water in torrents down the street. He watched in
amazement as wind ripped away the metal roof structure from a
substantial two-story home and blew it away like paper.
“It is
like bullets,” he said of the sound of metal structures banging and
buckling in the wind. “This is double destruction,” he said, referring
to the damages wrought by Eta just 12 days earlier.
“This is coming in with fury,” said Artola Schultz.
Storm surge was on the mind of Yasmina Wriedt in Bilwi’s seaside El Muelle neighborhood.
“The
situation doesn’t look good at all,” Wriedt said earlier in the day.
“We woke up without electricity, with rain and the surf is getting
really high.”
Wriedt, who works for a small-scale fishing
organization called Piquinera, said the roof of her house was blown off
in Eta less than two weeks ago.
“We repaired it as best we could.
Now I think the wind will take it again because they say (Iota) is even
stronger,” she said, the sound of hammering echoing around her as
neighbors boarded windows and reinforced roofs.
During Eta, the
surf came up to just behind her house, where she lives with eight other
members of her family. “Today I’m afraid again about losing my house and
I’m frightened for all of us who live in this neighborhood,” she said.
Wriedt
said some neighbors went to stay with relatives elsewhere, but most
have stayed. “We’re almost all here,” she said. “Neither the army nor
the government came to move us.”
Cairo Jarquin, Nicaragua
emergency response project manager for Catholic Relief Services, had
just visited Bilwi and smaller coastal communities Friday.
In
Wawa Bar, Jarquin said he found “total destruction” from Eta. People had
been working furiously to put roofs back over their families’ heads,
but now Iota threatened to take what was left.
“The little that
remained standing could be razed,” Jarquin said. There were other
communities farther inland that he was not even able to reach due to the
condition of roads. He said he heard that Wawa bar was evacuated again
Saturday.
Evacuations were conducted from low-lying areas in Nicaragua and Honduras near their shared border through the weekend.
Nicaraguan
Vice President Rosario Murillo, who is also the first lady, said that
the government had done everything necessary to protect lives, including
the evacuation of thousands. She added that Taiwan had donated 800 tons
of rice to help those affected by the storms.
Limborth Bucardo,
of the Miskito Indigenous ethnic group, said many people had moved to
churches in Bilwi. He rode out Eta with his wife and two children at
home, but this time decided to move in with relatives in a safer
neighborhood.
“We hadn’t finished repairing our houses and
settling in when another hurricane comes,” Bucardo said. “The shelters
in Bilwi are already full, packed with people from (surrounding)
communities.”
Iota is the record 30th named storm of this year’s
extraordinarily busy Atlantic hurricane season. It’s also the ninth
storm to rapidly intensify this season, a dangerous phenomenon that is
happening increasingly more often. Such activity has focused attention
on climate change, which scientists say is causing wetter, stronger and
more destructive storms.
Iota is stronger, based on central
pressure, than 2005′s Hurricane Katrina and is the first storm with a
Greek alphabet name to hit Category 5, Colorado State University
hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach said. It also sets the record for
the latest Category 5 hurricane on record, beating the record set by the
Nov. 8, 1932, Cuba Hurricane.
Eta had
hit Nicaragua as a Category 4 hurricane, killing more than 130 people
as torrential rains caused flash floods and mudslides in parts of
Central America and Mexico. Then it meandered across Cuba, the Florida
Keys and around the Gulf of Mexico before slogging ashore again near
Cedar Key, Florida, and dashing across Florida and the Carolinas.
Iota
was forecast to drop 10 to 20 inches (250-500 millimeters) of rain in
northern Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and southern Belize, with as
much as 30 inches (750 millimeters) in isolated spots. Costa Rica and
Panama could also experience heavy rain and possible flooding, the
hurricane center said.
The prospect of more rain was raising the anxiety of those still homeless after Eta.
On
Monday, Carmen Isabel Rodríguez Ortez was still living inside a
government shelter with more than 250 people in La Lima, Honduras, just
outside San Pedro Sula. Devastated by Eta’s destruction, she quickly
broke into sobs as she contemplated the torrential rains of another
storm.
“We’re living a real nightmare,” Rodríguez said. The
Chamelecon river flooded her Reformada neighborhood as Eta passed,
submerging their homes. “Now they announce more rain and we don’t know
what’s going to happen, because our homes are completely flooded.”
Eta was this year’s 28th named storm, tying the 2005 record.
Over
the past couple of decades, meteorologists have been more worried about
storms like Iota that power up much faster than normal. They created an
official threshold for this rapid intensification — a storm gaining 35
mph (56 kph) in wind speed in just 24 hours. Iota doubled it.
Earlier
this year, Hannah, Laura, Sally, Teddy, Gamma, Delta, Zeta and Iota all
rapidly intensified. Laura and Delta tied or set records for rapid
intensification.
The official end of the hurricane season is Nov. 30.
Associated Press writers Marlon González in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; Seth Borenstein in Bethesda, Md.; and Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed to this report.